1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to audio telephone conferences, and more particularly to managing an audio conference in which some participants have both an audio connection and a computer interface that displays information about the conference call.
2. Description of the Related Art
Audio conferences are often used as an effective and easy way of communicating in a business meeting. However, there are many things that may be communicated by visual cues during a face-to-face meeting that must be communicated with an audio indicator during an audio conference. The lack of visual communication and the need for extra audio indicators seriously impacts the productivity of an audio conference.
Typically, at the beginning of an audio conference, all of the participants are connected at the same time. If another person then later joins the meeting there must be some audio indication that someone else has joined to allow the others to know who is in the meeting. The person that has joined the meeting may ask "who else is here" in order to determine to whom they are speaking. One existing audio conference system, sounds a tone when someone enters or leaves a conference, prompting the other participants to ask "Who left?" or "Who entered?" In addition, if a participant decides to leave the conference or reenter the conference, there must be an audio indication of this.
During the conference there may be a discussion concerning documents or graphical materials that all of the participants do not possess. It may be desirable to share these documents with all participants. Often this material is either pre-sent to the participants or sent after the meeting, but is not typically received during the meeting.
A further problem in audio conferences is the need to balance the voice levels of the participants. For example, some participants may have phones that produce a higher volume, while others may use speaker phones that produces a great deal of background noise, and it would be desirable to be able to change signal volumes of individual participants.